


It's a nice day for a royal wedding

by MontagueBitch (porcia_catonis)



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Friends to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-12
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2018-06-01 21:30:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6537004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/porcia_catonis/pseuds/MontagueBitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fix-it for s1e13. Written in the style of Quentin-narration.  Eliot still has to marry to take the throne, but he's allowed to decide who.  However, this leaves him with only two viable options, and Quentin's the lucky winner.  From there, they navigate the strangeness of going from friends, to spouses, maybe with something else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. How I lost the "being the High King" lottery, and the consolation prize was getting gay married

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliot discovers the requirements of a high king involve picking a spouse. Quentin Coldwater suddenly finds himself a bridgegroom--er, groomgroom to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought the finale was good except for this absolutely horrible plotline edition. So out of spite, I began this cute, gay Fluff fic.

**Chapter Four: How I lost the "being the High King" lottery, and the consolation prize was getting gay married**  
By Quentin Coldwater

Okay, so we tested the blade to see who's high king.  As he brought it towards my hand, I was telling myself that _this is the moment I've been waiting for_.  This should be the part of the story where Fillory realizes how deeply I've loved it, and for how long, and in a snap of pain, I'll be ready to save and rule this place.  I know I'd just cut my hand less than twenty-four hours ago, but honestly in this moment, I was so lost in excitement I don't even flinch.  I am so ready for this pain.

Which never comes.  It turns out, I'm not the high king.  I know, right?  I totally thought it was me.  At this point, I was just starting to hope to whatever an atheist hopes for that it's not Penny, because Penny's the asshole who spilled a beer all over the lost Fillory book.  Also, he's a dick. But for once, things weren't the worst they could possibly be, and the blade passed right over Penny, too.

So, by the time we got to Eliot, no one's really all that shocked anymore when it runs across his hand and he's cut.   

"So," he said.  "High King.  I suppose there's something nominally appropriate there."  Penny rolled his eyes, let him take his moment to enjoy it.  Meanwhile, I was freaking out just a little bit.  I may not be the high king, but there's still a pretty big chance of being a regular king, or a position on the court.  And there's the fact that I know the High King of Fillory personally.  I had sex with the High King of Fillory, and as jealous as I am in that moment, there's something kind of perfect about it all.  Eliot had this look in his eye I don't think I've seen there before, and it's like Fillory knows what he needs, and is giving it to him.  Eliot needed a purpose for all his greatness, and Fillory knew that.  It's so much like what I loved in the books.

"Great."  Margo broke the following silence.  "He gets a crown.  Do we have to do some sort of ceremony, or can we go?"

"Of sorts,"  The Blacksmith said with a pause.  He was searching for words, and I can't blame him.  Either he was used to people knowing this offhand, or perhaps he has lived his whole life in terror of a Beast-torn Fillory, where legends like ours, of Kings and Queens of Earth-born lines, were a memory do distant he only knows it from the snapshots his father told him about.  "The High King must marry.  That ceremony seals the title."

"Marry."  Suddenly, Eliot looked less brightly lit than he did ten seconds ago.  "Marry _whom_ , exactly?"  

"That much is to the High King's discretion."  Said the Blacksmith.  "But the wedding itself, if the King is of age, must precede all else."

"So I could marry literally anyone or anything?"  Eliot raised a brow, and the Blacksmith nodded to concede.  Eliot's eyes pan back to the group.  "Well, that leaves mostly you all.  The alternative being a bunch of strangers and animals, at any rate."

"I swear to fuck, if you get on one knee, I will leave you at the altar."  Penny answered the question he wasn't asked, and for a moment, I was confusingly worried that Eliot might have picked him anyway.  There are only two men here, and being his second choice seems kind of sad in that scenario.  I was aware, cognitively, that this wasn't something to care about, but part of me was so caught up in not being the least desirable outcome.

"Quentin,"  Eliot turns towards me, crossing past Penny, and the Blacksmith, and the blade. "It's your lucky day."

And despite having literally a moment ago decided that I didn't want it to be Penny, it was suddenly so hard to wrap my head around the idea that this meant I would be marrying Eliot.  "I--what?"

"I'm asking you to marry me, Q.  This is a yes or no question.  Not for a grade.  But I'd really prefer it be you if we're going to do this."

I thought I would have wanted to laugh this off, but this felt like such an expression of trust, like something that was hard for him to swallow, and I couldn't feel anything more than honored for a moment.  I've always resented the idea of being sidekick to my own life, second-in-command to someone else.  It always boiled my blood that a sidekick who was just as capable as the hero would ever accept the position.  

I realize that I hadn't realize what it was to know someone who really deserved to be a hero.  That had been before Alice, before Eliot.  And the idea of just regular King Quentin, opposed to the High King Quentin of my early childhood dreams, doesn't seem like such an awful direction for my life to take.

"Yes."  The word sounded clunky, and strange.  I've never imagined myself being the one to accept a proposal before. Usually, in my head, I did the proposing. Usually not to Eliot, but in fairness, I hadn't really met Eliot until recently. So here it went.  "I'll marry you."


	2. Well, fuck.  I end up married to the first person I met in grad school

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliot and Quentin begin to cope with their situation and with themselves, Quentin tries his hand at creative writing, and post-wedding lock-ins provide a nice location for some bonding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter turned out so long you guys. It ran away and escaped me. But good news! The actual wedding happens in this chapter! Yay, plot moving forward! Also this chapter is mostly friendship fluff, the actual Queliot starts happening at the end and will intensify hereafter, I swear.

**Chapter Five: Well, fuck.  I end up married to the first person I met in grad school**  
By Quentin Coldwater

Only a few hours needed to pass before I married Eliot.  I had more or less been expecting this to be the sort of thing I could procrastinate on.  I thought I could have told the Fillorians "Yeah! I'm totally going to marry Eliot.  Just after we kill the beast.  We'll take a long engagement. And plan a party, and all that shit."  

It turns out the Fillorian courtly manner about these things isn't exactly something Queen Victoria would have approved of.  Generally speaking, you propose within a few hours of the actual wedding, which demands lots of witnesses.  It's a frenzy to plan that one out normally, and I'll let you wrap your head around that one, yourselves.  This was one of the few customs the books never prepared me for, on account of the main characters being fourteen.  It's odd to say that the speed wasn't even the weirdest part of the whole deal.

After being dragged around for a while and told what to do throughout the whole ceremony, I was afforded a few moments of down time.  Eliot being nowhere to be found, despite being the other groom, the only other person here I was on real speaking terms with was Julia, and so I made like an introvert at a party, and glued myself to her side.  "You know, I've always figured you'd be around for my wedding."  I didn't bother to mention that in a really weird dream I had when I was seventeen, she'd been the other half of it.

"No shit, Coldwater.  Why wouldn't I be?"  There's something more comforting than I can say in that moment.  Mostly, it's the ability of that sentence to convey the fact that I was being an idiot to assume that Jules and I wouldn't be there for each other in the end. "Sure, in my head if either of us got married we were, like, forty, and dating whoever the other half of the cake was.  But still.  It's a big day."  She wrapped her arm around my shoulder, and for the time being, everything was alright.  Or at least, it might be.

"Thanks, Jules."

"Don't mention it."  She squeezed, and I put up my hand on top of hers, not ready to let go of this.  "Look--Q,"  I knew something that stated with 'Look,' or 'But,' or some such would be coming.  This was Julia, and she's not so great at taking things without question.  It's definitely among her best qualities. "You don't have to do this for this guy.  You know that, right?  I get it--he's not into girls.  But you're not the only person around who fits his bill.  Don't make yourself miserable, okay?"

"Jules," I stop her there.  "This is for Fillory.  They won't give us what we need to stop the beast if we don't give them the High King they want.  Besides, if history repeats itself, I'll die and leave Eliot a widow in a few hours, anyway."

"Wait--"

"Okay. Sorry. Um. That was a bad time for gallows humor. Jesus.    What I'm trying to say is that if I'm willing to die for Fillory, why wouldn't I be willing to give up some amazing love life that I frankly don't have and never have had?  I mean, really.  Compared to death, if the worst option is becoming royalty and being married to an alcoholic Algernon Moncrieff who's generally a pretty good guy if you catch him sober, I think I'm okay with my life."

"I still hate it.  This feels like you have no choice in it."

"I don't, really."  I shrugged.  "But like, when does life ever stop with the bullshit long enough to let me make a decision anyway?  I'm fine.  I really am."

"Okay.  Fine.  Good enough for me."

Eliot, meanwhile, was learning a thing or two, himself.  Before I go further, you may be wondering to yourself, 'this is bullshit, how the fuck would he know what Eliot was doing while he was nowhere near him at the time?' To which, I say, 'you're an astute reader.  I don't know word for word.  What you're about to see is what we call a creative reconstruction of things I was told about after the fact.  So, strap in, and take this situation-as-told-by-Eliot-as-retold-by-me with a salt shaker.

"Fillorian marriages are really different."  Margo, Gretchen Wieners with silky hair, had already found out more in a few hours than the best of us mere mortals might in a week. "Like, _really_ different."

"What, are we going to get naked, perform some fellatio for an audience and sign a paper with some witnesses?"  Eliot was bored to think about it.  "You know I'm not above exhibition."

"No--look, I'm talking about everything after."  Eliot was caught off-guard.  this was the part where Margo rolled her eyes, or made a comment about his ass and called him some derogatory but loving name or the other.  None of these things happened, and Eliot felt the settling air of seriousness chill the moment.  "They're strict as fuck about this kind of thing, and it's pretty etched in stone that once you're married, you can never be with anyone else.  Ever.  No way out."

" _Ever_ , ever?"  Margo just shook her head.

Eliot wanted, in that moment, to melt down.  In one second, this go-to way to remind himself he was still somebody that people wanted or admired was gone as quickly as a knife could cut his hand.  "But I can just go back to Earth and--"  She shook her head again.  He took some relief, because she looked as fucked up about it as he felt, but at the same time, he couldn't conceive that it mattered much that she was upset, too.  Her life would go on, virtually uneffected. 

"El, you don't have to do this."

"Except that I do.  Because they won't entrust the blade to a party of wanderers they don't believe have any good intentions for the throne.  And no blade, no dead beast, and we're back to getting killed at Brakebills."  It was grim, but Eliot wasn't sure why he'd ever expected this not to be.  He chalked it up to an altered chemical state that must have temporarily let him think optimism was real.  "Well," he said after a pause.  "What does it matter, anyway? My life is fucked no matter what.  I'm miserable with sex, booze, and drugs.  Is it really going to be any worse with slightly less sex, and still booze and drugs?"  

He said slightly less there, I was informed, because he was not actually in objection to sleeping with his fiance, though he was fairly certain at the time that said fiance was straight.   

"Anyway, Bambi.  I thought creating myself, being who I am--I thought that would change some essential shittiness that's clung to my back since I could walk.  And it didn't.  Life was still just as empty, still just as fucking lonely.  The only difference now is that I dress better, the bruises aren't physical, and I've got nothing to declare but my genius.  I'm still not doing anything that actually means shit in any grand scheme.  What's the fucking point of being me if I'm not--part of something--" he trailed off, losing his nerve.

"Something bigger?"

Eliot looked at her, finally not avoiding her eyes, and he gave a small nod, just a tick of the head upward.  "Something bigger."  He let out a breath.  "You get me."  She was, he thought, the only one, most days.  And some days, neither of them got him at all.

He bowed for a moment, and to get the full effect on someone so tiny, Eliot had to nearly literally fold himself in half, lawn-chair style.  "Well, Queen Margo, will you at least be my best man?" he asked as he rose.  She nodded, and he puller her into a soft hug.

"Well," she managed a small smile, not able to feel any less sad, most likely, but able to deal with it for the time being.  "At least you know what he's like in bed before the wedding night."

And now, here's the part where we move onto the wedding proper.  Holy shit, you guys.  This is the part of my weird life story where I get married to a real person.  The whole ordeal has a lot fewer bowties than I expected the vague concept of 'my wedding' to have.  Also no one is writing their vows in elvish, which is something I would totally do if I were marrying a nerd and had time to do that. 

The ceremony goes by mostly with a few vows I was spoon-fed by a courtier a few moments prior, done over a seal of some official meaning, and is sealed with a promise of being married to Eliot for literally eternity, and a few amount of floral garlands.  I would go into more detail here, but my head was in such a blur and some weird, fugue-ish state that I'm not sure I could tell you what actually happened to me during this time.  

The main things you need to know about the ceremony are as follows:  Penny is an asshole, and he decided somewhere in there that he's so bored by weddings that he preferred to go fuck off halfway through and visit Victoria via astral-projection into a dungeon.  This lead to figuring out roughly where the hell Victoria was, though, which was a good thing in the long run.  Also, this event actually prevented us rescuing said girl and getting the blade by several hours.  The part of the ceremony that's unspoken is that the two spouses in question have to spend some kind of night together.  In a room. With no one else.  For the whole night.

Before you ask, no, they don't check on you and make sure you fucked the person.  They'd like it if you do, sure, but that really didn't make either of us any more in the mood.

Eliot and I were ushered in, and while I'm finally having my delayed freakout, I realize how much I've been avoiding his eyes.  I shouldn't, I knew.  None of this was his fault, or mine, and this isn't the worst thing in the world.  I'm not exactly in Leia the Huttslayer's predicament here, or Princess Buttercup's, or anyone else from books who ended up in a totally undesirable marriage situation against their will suddenly. Most people don't land themselves suddenly hitched to a handsome man who kisses well, and who's come through for them before more than once.

Eliot deserved not to be treated like a punishment, and to know I wasn't thinking of him that way.  More of a weird as hell circumstance I was so massively unprepared for that I forgot how to behave like a human being for a while.  I sat down on the bed in a sign of good faith, though I still couldn't think of something to say.

"Well, Mr. Waugh.  It looks like it's just you and I."  He sat down on the bed, doing like he always does, and making it seem like he owns any place he walks into.  How fitting it is that here, that's technically true now.

"Mr. Waugh?"  I scrunched my nose, letting myself be offended for a second.  "Who said you get to keep the last name, _Mr. Coldwater_?" 

"You're not the High King.  When you're the High King, you can make me change my name.  Duh."

"Okay, literally nothing in Fillorian law mandates I do that."  I was laughing now.  "Asshole."

"It does now.  The High King just made a decree.  Whoever gets married to the High King gets to have whatever name the High King pleases to call him."

"Holy fuck, if you do this every time you want something, I will end you, Macbeth style.  I'm pretty sure I was c-sectioned, so I can pull it off."

That was enough to make Eliot snort, and I'm proud of myself for the moment.  "Well, Coldwater.  Waugh.  You."  He waved his hand.  "I did manage to find a rather pleasant wine to take with me,"  he pulled the bottle from inside his coat, where he'd tucked it.  "And even if you're potentially my usurper, I would, in good faith, love to share it with you."

"This just got a shit ton better, oh my god."  I said, letting Eliot take first swig, and then guzzling down the sour, bubbly goodness of intoxication to come.  By the time we were halfway through it, the mood had gotten lighter, and the way we kept laughing became more and more real. 

"Eliot,"  I broke the moment's warm, slightly sleepy silence.  "Can I ask you something?"

"You have my permission."

"Why me?"  

"Is this a general question?  Because I'm pretty sure the answer to that is that life is shitty and your luck is exceptionally shitty."

"No.  I mean, like, for this.  Why not marry Margo and make some sort of legally-binding slumber party? Or anyone, really?"

"The answer is stupid,"  Eliot said.  "You won't like it."

"I don't care.  I really don't.  I just have to know.  I don't know why.  It's just bothering me."

"Oh, fine."  Eliot deflated. "Only because of this."  He took three more swallows of the wine before he said anything further.  "It's because part of me is naive.  Some stupid, starving part of me that won't die even though I've been neglecting it for years." Swig.  He put the bottle back down at last.  "You're right.  Margo and I would be the best Lavender marriage ever.  We would have been such great golden age Hollywood film starts in that respect.  But that's the most I have with Margo.  Fuck, I can already be her best friend.  Besides, the binding works on her, too.  How shitty would it be to ensure she never has sex the other party actually cares about for the rest of her life?"

"Wait, but didn't we all...?"

"Right you are.  But there's a difference between wanting something, and just not being so repulsed by it that you recoil.  She'd likely prefer the former, and I can give her the latter or nothing. No one wants that.  You, on the other hand,"  He took a breath, and shook his head.  He wasn't meeting my eye, but he wasn't avoiding it, either.  He was far away for the moment, not quite on earth.  He was a starman, so to speak, looking back to his own planet.  "It's different.  I mean, you I've actually wanted before.  And yes, I haven't known you for nearly three years--but I've known you for one particularly dramatic one, and there's something to be said for that.  There really is.  And I trust you, insofar as I ever do.  More than that, even.   I mean, look.  I'm not actually any less of a mess than you are--there's some sort of kinship, as stupid as that's about to sound.  You let yourself feel things.  You express the shit I feel but drink away.   and you unironically give a shit, which I have no idea how to do anymore.  So don't right yourself off as some undesirable last-picked kid on a dodgeball team.  Looking at the two of us, we were both there decades ago.  Not anymore."

"You mean you wanted it to be me?"  I had tried, in the moment, to lighten him up, to make some crack to make this all feel normal.  But it was a rare day to see Eliot Waugh laid so bare before someone.  It had been so easy to assume that Eliot didn't care.  It was only now that it was completely clear that he'd wanted exactly that, and how much of an act he'd had to put on to get there.  

"Sure I did, having to pick.  Besides.  There's some stupid fairytale part of my head that thought, you know, there's a chance with this one.  Higher purpose demands I get a ball and chain no matter what.  Where's the harm done in making mine someone I can honestly say I'd kiss a second time, or who I'd actually trust as far as I could throw?  See?  I told you.  It was stupid, and naive, and now this is uncomfortable."

"It's not, Eliot," I told him.  "It's really not."  I put the wine on the bedside table.  I was warm and tipsy, and thankfully, I didn't feel the need to be blasted just to get through tonight anymore.  "And I don't actually blame you.  Here's to hoping we can make something work."

"Despite, you know, the whole 'you're straight' issue."

"Yeah, uh, not so sure about that anymore." I swallowed.

"Is this the part where I remind you 'it's okay to be gay'?"  He and I were both cackling by the time the sentence finished, breaking his faux doe eyes.

"You're an ass."  I shoved him, lightly on the arm, and he nudged me back as he regained his balance.  "But uh, sleeping with you wasn't actually the be-all, end-all of attraction to you.  So it's your fault, but not in the way that you're thinking."

This seemed to please him, as stroking his ego tended to do with Eliot.  We went back to the stupidity of before this until someone fell asleep first.  I didn't think this would be a night were I actually slept well.  As usual, my expectations were completely dead wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Better news! Now we begin the friends-to-lovers romcom portion of the fic in the next installment. Did they save Fillory? Do they like each other without wine yet? How will they decorate the royal bed chamber? Stay tuned, mmmmbitches.


End file.
